Harry admits regret at wearing a Nazi costume to a party

In his new Netflix series, the Duke of Sussex has spoken about a notorious incident that to this day makes him “ashamed”.

Harry said he was “ashamed” of wearing a Nzi fancy dress uniform. Picture: Netflix

The Duke of Sussex has spoken of “one of the biggest mistakes” of his life in the new Harry and Meghan documentary on Netflix.

In the third episode of the controversial series, which premiered on Thursday evening, Prince Harry said he was “ashamed” to have donned a Nazi uniform to a party in 2005.

The Duke was attending a “colonial and native” fancy dress party in England’s south west where he decided to wear a costume of a Nazi soldier, complete with a swastika armband.

The eye-opening outfit earned him a front page in British newspaper The Sun with the headline “Harry the Nazi”.

The fancy dress faux pas in 2005 made headlines. Picture: AFP PHOTO/JIM WATSON / AFP PHOTO / JIM WATSON.

Harry said he was “ashamed” of wearing a Nazi fancy dress uniform. Picture: Netflix

Within days, Harry apologised for the faux pas, saying: “I am very sorry if I caused any offence or embarrassment to anyone. It was a poor choice of costume and I apologise.”

But the incident severely tarnished his image and has been periodically brought up since.

“It was one of the biggest mistakes of my life,” Harry said in an interview on the third episode of the Netflix series.

“I felt so ashamed afterwards. All I wanted to do was make it right.”

He said he spoke to the UK’s then Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks and went to Berlin to talk to a holocaust survivor.

“I could have got on and ignored it and made the same mistakes over and over in my life, but I learnt from that.”

Prince Harry wearing the costume to a party in 2005.

According to the BBC, Mr Sacks – who died in 2020 – said at the time that the Prince wearing a swastika was in extremely poor taste but added: “I note that Prince Harry has recognised this”.

The Nazi incident happened years before Harry met Meghan. Much of the first three episodes which dropped were about how the Sussexes met.

“We met on Instagram,” Prince Harry said. “I was scrolling through my feed and someone who was a friend had this video of the two of them and I thought ‘Who is that?’”

The friend later reached out to Meghan to see if she was interested in meeting the royal, and after inspecting the “beautiful photography and environmental shots” on his Instagram feed, she agreed to a date.

Harry said he and Meghan meant on Instagram. Picture: Netflix

Meghan was in London to attend Wimbledon and met Harry at a bar – and their romance was almost over before it began, when Harry was very late.

“I didn’t know him,” Meghan said. “So [when he was late] it’s like ‘Oh, is this what he does?’ No. I’m not doing this. Guys who have so much of an ego that you think any girl would sit around and wait half an hour for you, I was just not interested in that.”

But when Harry showed up red-faced, sweaty and clearly mortified at his lateness, Meghan forgave him, and the rest is history.

Although the retelling of the pair’s meeting varies from how Prince Harry originally explained it.

In 2017, Harry told the BBC: “It was definitely a set-up — it was a blind date. It was a blind date for sure.”